


who knows where the time goes?

by Zsazsa4



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Anal Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, lot and lots of sweat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:41:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29293845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zsazsa4/pseuds/Zsazsa4
Summary: A lazy weekend afternoon in a 70s AU in which Tozer is a folk musician and Tommy at art school.
Relationships: Thomas Armitage/Solomon Tozer
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12
Collections: The Terror Rarepair Week 2021





	who knows where the time goes?

He’d turned up at Sol’s with his guitar in hand, pretending at having a lesson, although he wasn’t really planning on it, hands still unsteady from the party the night before. Sol himself hardly looked as if he were expecting it either, just in his undershirt and boxers, grinning at Tommy’s open mouth. ‘Landlady’s out,’ he'd said, ‘gone to her daughter’s for the week.’ 

Sol’s room was not luxuriously appointed, a double in one of those big Victorian houses by the closed-off cemetery in a state of no longer genteel disrepair. A bed crammed against the big bow window, a battered wardrobe, a low table with a record player on it - but what overwhelmed you when you walked in were the stacks and stacks of records, filed in a complicated system of genre, artist, label and date that Tommy still didn’t understand although Sol had patiently explained it to him.

‘You're earlier than I thought you'd be, I haven't had time to wash up after work. What time did you get up, then, twelve? One?’ 

‘Half one,’ he admitted, and yawned, because he knew Sol liked it, liked teasing him about his idleness and excesses.

‘I’ll put the kettle on for some coffee. Good night?’

‘Went to a party at the University College halls,’ Tommy said, ‘they had some pub group in from Essex, someone's school mates. It was fun, a bit primitive. Very straight,’ he added, glancing at Sol, who didn’t say anything or acknowledge that he'd heard. He knew that there had been women for Sol, before. And might well be again, he'd think sometimes when he was alone at night, taking a strangely sweet pleasure in making himself miserable. 

They’d met in his second year, when London had bountifully provided friends, books, clothes shops, subtitled films and most of all music. If it hadn't lived up to the sex he'd hoped for - not expected, he knew not to expect it - well, he got it here and there occasionally so he couldn't complain, not really. But then he'd met Sol when for once he hadn't been looking for it, had been buying a round at a pub when he'd been crushed into a big broad stranger, pressed right up into his chest by the scrum at the bar. He'd been so overcome with want that he'd had to look away, which wasn't infrequent for him but then this stranger - Sol - had looked back. 

He tried so hard not to keep staring when he made it back to his table, tried not to get caught. But Sol had come over and introduced himself in front of everyone and asked for a light. He lit them both cigarettes and with a jolt Tommy realised the filter was slightly damp where it had been in Sol’s mouth. And then they’d slipped away. 

‘Just how old are you,’ he asked, peering at him under the yellow sodium light of a lamppost, and Tommy said, ‘Twenty,’ because he was, nearly, and held his breath for a painfully long moment when it looked like they might be parting ways after all. But then Sol nodded and Tommy brought him back to his room, which was stupid, the college owned the houses and once in a while the night watchman even turned up when he was supposed to. He couldn't wait, though, he thought privately that he might die if they had to go out all the way to Bow, he'd have been stammering and trembling standing pressed together on the Central line. And then it was more than he'd dared hope for. It still was.

Tommy had a look at the record out next to the player. The Gilded Palace of Sin. ‘Bit mainstream for you, isn’t it? I can’t see you in one of these flowery suits.’ He picked it up and looked it over. ‘All this psychedelic stuff is dead, anyway,’ he said tentatively, looking up at Sol from under his lashes.

Sol snorted. ‘And I suppose the future’s you and your mates taking diet pills and ephedrine because you don’t know where to get proper speed. You’ll give yourself a stomach ulcer going on like that.’

‘And ruin my brain,’ Tommy said, satisfied, feeling that Sol worried about him a bit even if he pretended not to, or at least thought about him. Probably not as much as he thought about Sol - not as much as he had last night, anyway, sweating and dozing and tangled up in his sheets in the pale light of dawn - but it was still something. ‘I know.’

‘All right, all right,’ Tozer said, ‘Your brain’s not my problem anyway. Look, the one next to it is for you, your bunch at Central will be impressed with that.’

‘Hopeton Lewis,’ Tommy said, intrigued, turning the 78 over in his hands. ‘I don’t know him. It’s rocksteady?’

‘Yeah, for if you ever come down enough to listen to something midtempo. Not my thing, but since you all want to be rudeboys…’ He shook his head and laughed. ‘Just as long as you don’t try it on in Brixton, they’ll eat you alive.’

Tommy blushed. He didn’t look very sharp at that moment anyway, wearing a long-buried jumper his mum had bought him and with his hair both frizzy and damp from the bath, and he busied himself looking through the small pile of unfiled records. Some jazz, some blues, but none of the rest interested him very much, all from that lot at Topic who might be recording Sol. But then again, they might not.

‘If you’re not careful,’ Sol said, leaning back on the bed, legs deliberately parted, ‘I’ll start thinking you only want me for my record collection.’

Tommy looked back for a second, torn; he did want to keep looking through what Sol had bought. But the sight of him, undershirt taut across his shoulders and belly, sweat-stained at the armpits, proved too tempting, and he shuffled over to the bed. He knelt between Sol’s legs, buried his face at the juncture of his groin and thigh, breathing in the smell of his sweat and that distinctive sharp musk of arousal. He pulled his boxers down, mouth watering at the sight of Sol’s cock, half-hard in his thatch of brown hair.

‘Hang on, pet, let’s see you properly,’ Sol said, lifting Tommy’s arms and pulling the jumper off over his head. His first impulse was always to hunch in on himself under the weight of Sol’s gaze, but he made himself sit up straight, shivered as Sol ran a hand over his shoulders, groping at his chest, along his ribs to the dark hair on his chest and stomach. ‘You need feeding up,’ he’d said, not the first night they were together but maybe the third or fourth. The first time that Tommy was able to unbend into the knowledge that there’d be a next time.

He ducked his head, then, took Sol into his mouth before he could harden fully because he loved to feel him grow and stiffen against his tongue. He kept his jaw loose, resisted the impulse to suck, and moaned as Sol thrust into his mouth, just gently.

‘Your lips, Tommy,’ Sol said, getting a handful of his hair and pulling him closer so that Tommy swallowed him all the way down. ‘Red as a girl’s.’

Tommy was achingly, impossibly hard in his jeans already. Only just restraining himself from rubbing off against Sol’s leg, just from mouthing and licking at his prick, from having it all the way down his throat, one hand clutching at Sol’s thighs and the other fondling his balls, plump and furry. He pulled off Sol’s cock, a line of spittle extending from his lips. He’d meant to lick at his balls, suck one into his mouth, but Sol grasped a handful of his hair and held his head back. He ran a thumb over Tommy’s lips, hooked two fingers into his mouth. ‘Christ, Tommy,’ he said. ‘Take your jeans off and get up here.’

He stripped the rest of the way hurriedly, gave a last longing look at Sol’s cock before he hauled him up onto his lap. Sol kissed his way down his neck, sucked at his earlobe, thumbed his nipples, like he couldn't get enough of touching him, and the thought made Tommy moan. They clasped each other close, Sol’s cock rubbing up against the cleft of his arse. 

‘I washed,’ he said, anxious. ‘I had a bath.’ 

‘Got yourself nice and clean for me?’ Sol murmured, pressing a finger gently up against Tommy’s hole, smiling at the little gasp Tommy gave at the feel of him there, one hand splayed across his back holding him steady and one at his most private, intimate part. ‘You were thinking about it, then, when you got up?’

Shame and arousal rushed through him, pooling at the pit of his stomach, and he nodded and looked away.

‘Tell me,’ Sol said, catching hold of his chin and tipping his face up, although Tommy still couldn’t meet his eyes.

‘When I was trying to sleep,’ he said, quickly, ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about it, how much I wanted to be here and - and - in the bath, earlier, it was, I woke up with it on my mind and I touched myself thinking about it.’ He’d still been half-asleep, half-dreaming, the memory of it was like a waking dream, but he’d felt as if he were on fire when as he tugged at his cock, his other hand spreading his hole, imagining Sol's hands on him, his weight on top of him.

‘Did you,’ Sol said, eyes very intent. ‘Couldn’t help yourself?’

‘You know I can’t,’ he said as quick as he could, and buried his face in Sol’s shoulder, took the chance to get a good sniff of his sweat without Sol noticing. 

‘Look at me, pet,’ Tozer said gently, sitting Tommy back and reaching for the jar of vaseline in a drawer of the bedside table. It always made Tommy blush, the click of the lid and the wet sound as Sol scooped some out, not that his face wasn’t red enough already. The press of a finger against him, then into him, and he loved to feel Sol breaching his most private place, loved to take him as deep as he could. A crook of Sol’s broad fingers - his strong hands, almost stubby - and he whined, cock twitching and dribbling clear fluid.

‘God, if you're like this after you did it this morning - go on, ask me for it,’ Sol said, not sounding so steady now himself. ‘How much you want it, go on.’

‘Please,’ he said, voice cracking, ‘please, I need it, you know I need it.’

‘I know you do, pet, I’ll give you what you need.’

Sol held him steady in his lap, then, pushed in with a wet squelch that would have humiliated Tommy had he not been so far gone, so that Tommy’s eyes squeezed shut and he felt himself dizzyingly, gloriously, split open. Between his prick, heavy and leaking, rubbing against Sol’s stomach, and Sol’s own thick cock up his arse, he couldn't think, could barely breathe. ‘Fuck, Tommy,’ Sol panted, as much to himself as to Tommy, it sounded like. ‘You were fucking made for this.’

He came with a little grateful whimper, up his stomach and chest, and held Sol as tightly as he could. He kept fucking up into him as Tommy whined at how good it was, how much it was, until Sol groaned and spilled inside him. 

He tried to push himself up but his legs felt like jelly, his limbs like there weren't quite his. Sol swung him off to lie on the bed next to him, thumbed at his shoulder blade. 

‘You always look at me like that,’ he said. ‘Makes me feel ten feet tall. But - Tommy - you don't want to get carried away, I'm, I'm not…’ he trailed off. 

Too soon, before Tommy could work out what he meant, Sol rolled away, rifled through the bits and bobs collecting on the bedside table for his cigarettes and lighter. He smoked Benson and Hedges, and Tommy, who’d never known what was the right brand when it came to cigarettes, had in fact inclined American, had switched as soon as he’d found out.

‘You busy tonight?’

‘What?’ Tommy said, dozy. He always found it difficult to come back to the world after they fucked, like his head was full of cotton wool and everything was muffled and distant.

‘You got stuff to do? Or do you fancy coming along to the Erebus with me, it's guest night and they've got an alright act on.’

He pretended to consider, put it on that there was a chance he might not go. ‘Bunch of old blokes with concertinas? Not really my scene.’

‘Your tea and a round or two into the bargain, how's that,’ Sol said, grinning at him. He liked to look after him, treat Tommy to things, and Tommy liked to let him. 

‘Yeah, go on then, let's call it cultural anthropology.’ Sol gave him a mock cuff to the head. ‘Oh - but I'm not dressed,’ he said, looking at the jumper balled-up on the floor and biting his lip. 

‘I had imagined you'd put your clothes back on. Maybe after another wash.’ Sol traced a finger up his inner thigh, up towards his arse where Sol’s come had started to trickle out. 

‘You know that's not what I meant, I'm not wearing my good clothes -’

‘What was it you said, cultural anthropology? Think of it as fieldwork, you don't want to frighten the horses. They'll not have bought new clothes since rationing went out.’

‘But what if I run into someone I know?’ 

‘Then they'll drop dead of shock at seeing you, I don't know.’ Tozer shook his head. ‘You are a funny kid. Still, not that you don't look good.’ He gave Tommy the cigarette, popped it between his lips for him. ‘I'll put the kettle on so we can have some hot water.’

Tommy thought, privately, that there might have been something nice, if sticky, about not washing Sol off him, out of him, afterwards. Having proof that he was, as Sol had almost but not quite said, made for him. He wondered if anyone at the Erebus knew what he was to Sol; one or two, probably, but not enough to hold his hand across the table. He thought about it sometimes, whether it might be nice, being one of the several dowdy-ish girlfriends who were still clearly unaccustomed to London after ten or fifteen years there. Wearing what they thought were short skirts, fringes cut with kitchen scissors straight across the forehead, sipping a girls’ drink, a vodka and lime or something. He took a drag of the cigarette; tried to taste Sol on the filter, thought he could. But he was probably just imagining it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDC4284SA0/)
> 
> on [twitter](https://twitter.com/Milk__punch) and [tumblr](https://roaringgirl.tumblr.com/) here!


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